1. Field of the Invention
This invention, in general, relates to superconductor circuits and, more particularly, to superconductor circuits which utilize superconducting Josephson junctions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the field of digital logic extensive use is made of well known and highly developed CMOS (complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor) technology. As CMOS has begun to approach maturity as a technology, there is an interest in alternatives that may lead to higher performance in terms of speed, power dissipation computational density, interconnect bandwidth, and the like.
An alternative to CMOS technology comprises superconductor based single flux quantum circuitry, utilizing superconducting Josephson junctions, with typical signal power of around 4 nW (nanowatts), at a typical data rate of 20 Gb/s (gigabytes/second), or greater, and operating temperatures of around 4° Kelvin.
As will be subsequently described, the Josephson junction is an active device supplied with a DC bias and the power budget in such circuits is dominated by static power consumption which happens whether or not the active device is switching. It would be desirable to reduce power consumption including elimination of static power dissipation in such circuits.